WEDDING AT BELMOND LA RESIDENCIA & SON MARROIG, MALLORCA
Yulia & Lars — two days in Deià on Kodak Portra 400
Some weddings stay with you long after you've left the island. Yulia and Lars's celebration was one of them — two days in the hills of Deià that moved from a golden rehearsal dinner at Belmond La Residencia to a clifftop ceremony above the sea at Son Marroig. Joyful, generous, beautifully planned, and shot entirely on medium format film.
The celebration began at Belmond La Residencia, where the garden terraces fill with fairy lights at dusk and the village of Deià tumbles down the hillside above the pool. The rehearsal dinner was intimate and alive — guests grazing from a paella station on the lawn catered by Marc Fosh, wine glasses catching the golden light, the best-dressed people I've photographed all year drifting across the grass in feathered sleeves and floral prints and bamboo bags. The energy was immediate — this wasn't a polite warm-up dinner, it was the opening act of something extraordinary.
The next morning, before the wedding, we stayed at La Residencia for a couple session. Unhurried, warm, completely unposed. The pool. The sun loungers. A moment where both of them were reading La Resi Tribune side by side, completely absorbed, and I pressed the shutter quietly. One of my favourite photographs from the entire weekend — the kind of frame that only happens when there's no schedule and no rush, just two people in the most beautiful place they've ever been.
Then Son Marroig. The marble rotunda above the sea, dressed in white roses, sweet pea, and wisteria. The ceremony unfolded with the Mediterranean stretching to the horizon below — sincere, emotional, extraordinary on film. I've photographed at Son Marroig before and I know this light intimately: the way it comes in low from the west and wraps around the white marble, the way the stone terrace glows as the afternoon deepens, the way the sea changes colour every twenty minutes. On Portra 400, Son Marroig at this hour is one of the most beautiful things I have ever captured.
Long linen tables for the reception glowed in the last of the golden light while the Tramuntana darkened behind them. The speeches were emotional, the wine was generous, and the evening had that quality — warmth, exhaustion, joy — that only happens when a celebration has been building since the night before.
And somewhere in that roll of film, a double exposure: the ceremony crowd dissolving into the clifftop and the sea. Perhaps the most purely Mallorca photograph I have ever made.
I have photographed at Belmond La Residencia and Son Marroig multiple times now, and I understand these venues in a way that only comes from experience — where the light falls at every hour, which garden paths photograph best on film, how the ceremony space transforms as the afternoon deepens into evening. If you are planning a wedding at either venue — or a two-day celebration that moves between them — I know exactly how to photograph every part of your day.
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I'm Olya, a fine art film wedding photographer based in Barcelona. I photograph destination weddings, elopements, and love stories across Mallorca and the Mediterranean — every image captured on analog film so it will be cherished for generations.